Chapter 2

“What did you say?!”

I was stunned all over again.

Sharon and I had been married four years, and she'd always refused to have a child, quietly staying on birth control the whole time. I never imagined she'd end up pregnant at a moment like this.

She knew perfectly well how much this child meant to me, that my whole family had been longing for it, and now she was using it as a threat.

“I said I'm pregnant! Preston, I don't have time to play games with you. Open the checkpoint, let me through, and stop making this hard for me.”

She pressed a hand to her stomach and pulled an ultrasound printout from her pocket to show me.

“I was going to tell you, but all this got in the way. It's not too late to say it now. I'm almost three months along.”

The date on the ultrasound was a week old. Back then R&D was still in progress; the core breakthrough only came in that final week.

And at that point she could easily have brought the report to the company, requested to be excused from the rest of the project, and just rested until it was over.

But she came anyway.

She came for George.

A week ago George's parents had come here on a trip and fallen to their deaths, and their bodies were still being held at the funeral home.

George was away on business and couldn't get back, so he'd asked Sharon to go retrieve the bodies.

And Sharon had done it without any regard for the fact that she was pregnant.

Now she was turning that same pregnancy into a weapon against me.

“Did you hear me? Preston, hurry, open the checkpoint! I'll be back soon. I'll haul the bodies over and turn right around. You just cover things here for me.”

I shook my head. Something in me had already gone cold.

“What's that supposed to mean? Preston, you won't help me?”

I gave a cold laugh. The heartlessness on her face struck me as nothing but absurd.

“Is our child just a bargaining chip to you?”

“I don't care! Preston, will you stop making a scene? In the time you've spent on this, you could have just let me through.”

“No.”

My tone was firm. My mind was made up.

“You can't pass without your materials. Management has a rule on this, and it strictly forbids any team member on the R&D project from crossing state lines. Your materials are still unaccounted for. I'm reporting this to the company right now.”

Crack———

Before I could finish, Sharon slapped me hard across the face.

“Preston! How can you be this cruel? It's not your parents who died, is it? That's why you can stand there and say something so cold.”

“Or is this you settling a personal score on company time? You resent how close George and I have been? You've been jealous all along, and now you're using this moment to punish George and me? How small can you get?”

The slap burned.

And it burned me awake from the thing I'd been clinging to.

So she'd known all along. For four years she'd stayed close to George, testing again and again how much I, her husband, would tolerate, and she had known exactly what she was doing.

She simply hadn't cared, hadn't feared I'd ever turn on her, and had gone on testing that limit the whole time.

I didn't want to endure it anymore. I hit the checkpoint lock and sealed the barrier shut for good.

“Think whatever you want. I'm only doing my job. It's the rule.”

“So you don't want your child anymore?!”

Sharon hissed it low, the picture of someone in agony.

“If you don't open this checkpoint and let me through, then like I said, I'll abort the baby and divorce you!”

Divorce?

I'd lost count of how many times she'd thrown that word out.

Over four years of marriage it had stabbed me more times than I could count, until my heart bled.

But now that it had gone cold, it didn't hurt anymore, didn't bleed anymore. I could take the word gladly.

“Do as you like.”

I answered flatly, and it sent her into a rage as she climbed into the car.

“Fine! Preston, don't you dare regret this.”

Without a thought for how I felt, she got in, flashed the headlights a few times, laid on the horn, and gunned it straight at the checkpoint.

Bang———

A few violent crashes, and the barrier gave way. Sharon's car shuddered three times.

After a pause of a few seconds, Sharon drove off without once looking back.